


and endless faith like traps

by Ramasi



Category: Highlander: The Series
Genre: Character Study, Episode Related, F/M, M/M, Meta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-11
Updated: 2012-02-11
Packaged: 2017-10-30 23:25:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/337323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ramasi/pseuds/Ramasi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's just, Methos is actually pretty good at surviving.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and endless faith like traps

**Author's Note:**

> There's a reference to the deleted scene in which Methos puts Kronos in a well, but otherwise any information that doesn't come from the original series is ignored.

Twists and turns and dark, shadowed alleys with just enough moonlight that any naked blade will gleam bright as treachery itself. There's safety in that, in silence so intense that any sound is like a scream that carries farther than the sensation of another immortal's presence. But if you look, there's wide, sunlit roads of polished stone, endless and empty as the grassland after a raid, and yours and only yours for miles and miles, as far as your feet can carry you and your sword-arm reach.

Kronos taught him this, he thinks, or maybe he just forgot who else did. Freedom in the repeated, constantly recreated emptiness, and there's no safety like power. There will be no salt on the soil, and everything grows back, people like grass and grass fed by bones, to be cut down again a year later, and the world was endless, back then. (And maybe that's where he gave it up for good, when he learnt that someone had measured the very circumference of the earth, and you better make a nest somewhere in this small, reduced space, if you want to survive.)

There's only so much you can carry on a single horse, and there's another lesson. Take everything you want and want everything, there will be no limits, but do not think there is anything you may keep. Worlds rise and fall and even the horse that's part of you will wither away beneath you, and there's nothing, nothing you can carry with you through the years and centuries but your bare life.

He knew this before Kronos was even born, of course, but perhaps Kronos carried the knowledge in his blood from before his first death. He knows nothing of Kronos' past, and he knows his brother envies the haziness of his memories, like Methos sprung to life sword in hand and eternal; perhaps that's where the love starts, in the emptiness of his own mind that stretches back in all directions, the last ties to mortal life severed, and Kronos was good at that. Whenever something held him back, earthly and ephemeral, it was likely to end under Kronos' sword; he burned down his own present with the same fierceness, but that lent the practice no fairness, because all Kronos ever wanted was the four of them.

 _You've grown attached_ , Kronos says that day, and it isn't the first time, and it won't be the last, though it might have been the only time the words needed to be this clear. That is because Cassandra could have been as eternal as the sun, as he and Kronos are, the frailty of her future only at the edge of his blade (and he's thought about it many times, and he thinks about it then). _You've grown attached_ , and he turns away easily, lets Kronos pluck out those ties of twisted love like deep splinters, blood springing forth like an old illness. (Too much of a commitment.)

Kronos screams, in his tent, and dies, and he turns away from that, too.

They've never fought, of course, not even in play. If he wants practice, he'll have to single out a fighter during a raid and refrain from stabbing him in the back as he faces Silas, last one standing. Kronos looks on with exasperation as he goes through the moves, cold, precise, blind even to the hate and terror in his opponent's eyes. _Maybe we should get you a pet swordsmaster_ , Kronos says later, and Methos laughs and actually considers it.

Kronos warns them, _we don't raise a blade at each other_ , and they don't, not like this; only in the death of the night, in the faint light of a dying fire, Kronos lies above him, holding a sword between their necks. Methos can feel the metal against his skin, and it makes him more aware of every point of contact between their bodies, shivers travelling up and down his skin, and it's the only time, during their reign of terror, that he feels any fear. Maybe it's a conditioning, teaching him to avoid ever coming this far again at every cost, because Kronos would never: not in retribution and not for safety and not in anger, but still, why take the chance?

His own hand lies on the other end of the sword, fingers curling around the edge of the blade, bloody. Kronos grins down at him, feral and dangerous and safe ( _brother_ , he says, but gods are often incestuous), but part of Methos doesn't fully understand until Cassandra. He might have tortured her instead, slowly, the pain might have been worse and, thus, surrender faster, but he loves this too much, the fading of life in her eyes, the desperate gasps for breath, hands flailing blindly to stop the flow of blood. It's like a thousand raids repeated on one person, without consequences, and he might have grown addicted if the resistance hadn't eventually faded. And, like her, he's like wax in Kronos' hands, these nights, but he's always whole in the morning.

He's wrong about Cassandra, of course, but he only realises that much, much later: there's never been any true submission, only a desperate reshaping of the mind, poised for survival at any cost. He shouldn't have been surprised, after that, that Cassandra lasted for millennia.

He's less sure of Kronos' love a few thousand years later; if it had been him, with the time that passed and the history, and with Kronos' love for killing, he wouldn't have hesitated, wouldn't even have waited for himself to recover from the wound. But maybe he needn't have worried: it's not that Kronos doesn't mean the threats, but all he needs to withhold is an excuse. And Kronos knows that he knows this, but still –

 _That was the plan, wasn't it?_ Kronos says, reshaping the past, drawing him in, the twist of his lips telling clearly that he knows better, and maybe it's not manipulation if both parties know that's what you're doing. But his own nod makes it true when perhaps it wasn't before. Was it necessary? MacLeod would have come anyway, but maybe not at his bequest, and not in time. Kronos might have died, then, if Methos hadn't recently rediscovered guilt. Kronos doesn't know that, of course: he thinks that, aside from fear, it's still desire and affection that stay his hand, but that's just because Kronos has never desired anything but power and destruction, nor loved anyone since him. So he can't know that the betrayal of a lover is something one gets better at with practice like everything else. ( _Take it from me, it's easier than dying_ , he told MacLeod once. Most things are.)

It's Cassandra who pays the price, again, and that should have stopped him, when, in the recesses of his mind where he knows Kronos' steps like his brother knows his (like he knows MacLeod's, by now), he reads where this is leading. It's just, he wishes Cassandra well more than anyone, for the most selfish reasons, but when, these days, the mere sight of a friendly fist-fight can make him recoil, nothing Cassandra might endure can shock him. He spends the wait by her cage because it will ward off the others, but there's blood drying on her clothes, low in her stomach, and he remembers Kronos' screams of pain from thousands of years ago. He didn't know this would happen. He didn't know it wouldn't, either.

Kronos asked him if he didn't miss the freedom and the power, and who wouldn't? But that's another thing Methos left behind and that Kronos clung to, and maybe Methos saved his life by trapping him at the bottom of a well, because he doesn't think Kronos ever had the flexibility to last this long in the open. It's surprisingly easy, too, to develop a distaste for suffering: Kronos flared up at the experience with more anger, but flares are bright and noticeable, and Methos knew better even before letting himself remember empathy. And, even more, he'd miss evenings in friendly company, and beer, and music, and short-lived true love – he can deal with the losses. He just doesn't want to.

There's nothing insincere in his grief for Silas. Over the last ten years, he's followed his old friend from afar, and way back. Silas barely ever moves from one spot to the next, when his lack of aging will become too apparent. He's been in that same place for almost twenty years, chopping inhumane amounts of wood, and being so quiet and inoffensive that woodland creatures eat from his hands. His Watcher, clearly, has not the slightest idea who he is dealing with.

Caspian and Kronos' continued survival is a disappointment, but he's glad Silas is still around, like a living shred of his past, somewhere distant where hopefully Methos will never meet him again (still, he knows what the knowledge will be worth when Kronos finds him). And so his grief is as real as the lifeless body by his feet. When Cassandra raises the axe above him, he has no energy left for fear.

MacLeod succeeds in stopping her; that is how much weight his judgement holds. And that's what it took, perhaps, a betrayal this deep and this painful; no-one can say he hasn't put his life and his heart on the line. That's not _why_ he fought Silas, but maybe it's part of why he killed him and – _I know you better than you know yourself_ , Kronos would have said, and after all this time Methos knows himself just fine. It's not like he has MacLeod fooled. It's just that MacLeod is no better than Kronos when it comes to letting things he loves and respects fall to pieces. It's just that it's trust that will get him killed some day.

Because even after everything that's passed in the last few days, he looks just as betrayed, looking down at him from the stairs, when realisation hits, as Kronos does, mere minutes later, when he finds him fighting Silas; and it would almost be funny, because you'd think both of them would have _known_. MacLeod's eyes searching his when Kronos threatens Cassandra, and this is the moment for which Methos told him the whole story, down to the bits Cassandra hated herself too much for to share, so he'd know not to make this trade; and if MacLeod puts the sword down now, it will all be over. Methos would die for him to live, but he won't die by his side for mere honour's sake.

The road is sunlit here, too, where MacLeod dragged him back into the open; it's not like Methos hasn't learned to tread lightly even here, no sound under his foot soles, and a second blade hidden away at his belt. MacLeod wouldn't appreciate the parallel: he thinks that the _reasons_ for going out to fight are important, and if by reasons he means the life of people who matter, Methos isn't going to disagree.

MacLeod has asked him who he is _now_ , as if the past that's always been there and the silence MacLeod knew about suddenly changed everything, and this coming from a man who handed over his sword to him once. He's underestimated MacLeod, perhaps, because his friend is much better than Methos would have expected at dealing with the realisation that Methos is, in fact, exactly who he seems. _Going with the winner?_ MacLeod asked him, and now he knows.


End file.
